Published: December 8, 2008--
Weston Naef, a curator who over the last two decades helped build the J. Paul Getty Museum's photography collection into one of the most significant in the world, has said he will retire in January, the museum said Monday.

Mr. Naef moved to the Getty from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1984 after the Getty acquired several of the most important photography collections still in private hands. (Mr. Naef and the photographs arrived together: he served as a courier, accompanying 60 crates holding 18,000 images on an overnight flight to Los Angeles.)

During his tenure Mr. Naef oversaw a quadrupling of the Getty's photographic holdings, including the building of catalogs of work by pioneers like William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Gustave Le Gray and Carleton Watkins. The museum said it would begin a search for his replacement.